


cause it's just what you must do

by sevdrag (seventhe)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Clown Strippers, Deaf Clint Barton, I mean, M/M, Physical Disability, Tony Stark's Wardrobe, Trapped In A Closet, anyway, i wanted to make the closeted joke but
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:55:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28144218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventhe/pseuds/sevdrag
Summary: Clint ducks away at Tony's holiday party for a breather. Little does he know this closet is occupied.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Clint Barton
Comments: 22
Kudos: 152
Collections: Winterhawk Wonderland - 2020 edition!





	cause it's just what you must do

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yamyamyam](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yamyamyam/gifts).



> HELLO WHWL 2020! Darling yamyamyam, I do hope you enjoy this.
> 
> So I started out making this prompt funny, and then ended up bending to how it wanted to bring Clint and Bucky together under an umbrella of similarities neither one of them had acknowledged. That happens, sometimes. Hope you enjoy.

It isn’t that Tony Stark throws a _bad_ party. It’s just… a good party, all things considered, that has ended up being specifically bad for Clint. 

The music, so carefully piped through every single room, is doing a number on his hearing aids. He’s had to turn them down so low that conversation is impossible, which is the whole fuckin’ reason he’s here. Watching Tony and Steve dance with the strippers was fun for a bit, but the strippers are all dressed like clowns, and it's putting him off his usual love of dancing cause it’s bringing up all his horrible memories from the circus. Tony splurged on actual kegs of wine, but wine gives him a bad headache, and he’s already got one of those building because of his aids. He’s the only one who came in an ugly Christmas sweater other than Steve, he’s grumpy, and he’s fucking tired.

He doesn’t want to _leave,_ though; going home to his empty apartment sounds even more like a bummer. He probably just needs a little break. A breather somewhere, so he can rally up the rest of his holiday cheer and get properly drunk like everyone else.

“Okay,” he hears Tony call from the other room, “it’s time for Sexy Charades! Everybody line up so I can assign teams.”

That’s it. That’s the final straw. Clint hates charades. 

So, in a moment of panic, he grabs a bottle of something brown from the bar and tucks himself into the first closet he finds. The closet, of course, is the size of Clint’s bathroom, but that’s Tony for you. It’s a bit full with coats and some other shit in plastic bags, but Clint backs up until he can rest his back against the wall. He keeps his breathing soft and even in the sudden silence. Thank fuck Tony doesn’t have speakers in his closets. 

Clint thinks he hears footsteps outside the door, and it’s quiet enough in here, so he turns his aids back up a bit — no real reason, other than to hear Natasha looking for him so that he can try to hide in the giant raincoat he’s tucked up behind. The music is distant, he’s alone, and it smells weirdly good in here. Maybe Tony sprays his coats with nice cologne? Or maybe it’s an expensive air freshener? Who knows. Oh, look, it’s whiskey.

Clint’s gently twisting the top off the bottle when a voice behind him says, softly, “Clint?”

He absolutely doesn’t jump three miles into the air, no, not at all, but he does jerk around, get caught in something with a lot of fur on it, and almost spill the whiskey. “Jesus fuckin’ Christ,” he breathes, as the fuckin’ Winter Soldier appears out of the darkness like a ghost.

Bucky frowns at him. “What are you doing here?” he whispers.

Clint sputters something that eventually becomes words. “What are _you_ doing in here?”

“Hiding from Tony’s party,” Bucky says, like it’s obvious. “You?”

Clint racks his brain for a long moment to try and come up with something, and then gives up. “Hiding from Tony’s party,” he says, glumly.

Bucky shrugs. It’s a weird kind of solidarity to have with the Winter Soldier, but hey, at least Clint didn’t do anything more embarrassing than accidentally making out with a fur coat. As a gesture of that solidarity, he offers Bucky the bottle first. 

“Huh,” the Winter Soldier says, and takes a very long drink. 

“Can you even get drunk?” Clint asks despite his better judgment. 

“Probably not.” Bucky wipes his sleeve over the top and passes it back to Clint. “Gonna find out, though.”

Clint sips a bit less enthusiastically. He doesn’t actually want to get drunk in the closet, it was more… okay, it was a petty move to drink Tony’s good shit because he’s grumpy. 

“The music’s too…” Clint waves a hand. “Everywhere. It was futzing with my aids.”

“Your—?” Bucky leans in closer, and Clint realizes that it’s _Bucky_ that smells so good in here. That’s a realization he didn’t expect. Why does the Winter Soldier smell like pine trees, but in like a good, men’s-cologne kind of way? Clint’s not sure what to do with this information.

“Shit, I’m sorry,” Bucky says, bringing Clint back down to earth. “They’re so small, I never noticed them.”

Clint brings a hand up to awkwardly rub at his ear. “No worries, man. Tony keeps making them smaller so that people can’t see them, but…” He rubs the back of his neck, feeling a bit self-conscious. “There’s something nice about having a big ol’ purple chunk of polymer over your ear so that people _know_ , I guess.” _Confessions in the closet_ , Clint thinks, and can’t help but snort.

Bucky actually snorts in response, shifting so that Clint can see his metal fingers open and close. “Nah, man, trust me. I get it.”

Huh. Clint never thought about it that way, but having a big-ass scary metal cyborg arm — well. It’s different, isn’t it? But yeah, he’s right, there is something nice about not having to explain yourself. Ever. It’s sweet that Tony keeps wanting to make them unobtrusive, and Clint understands that there’s a strategic advantage in not letting enemies know he’s deaf as hell, but sometimes he misses his nice bright over-the-ears.

“Music wasn’t doing me any favors either,” Bucky adds, to Clint’s surprise. He watches Bucky’s shoulders hunch up until they’re around his ears. “I’m not quite — don’t like when I can’t tell whether someone’s behind me.”

“Oh, man, me too,” Clint finds himself saying, and he holds the bottle out again. “Maybe it’s a part of being deaf, I dunno? Like, my ears were ringing, sure, but I also don’t like letting Nat sneak up on me.”

Bucky snorts. “She could sneak up on you in a silent room.”

“You’re not wrong,” Clint admits. Is it weird that he’s being so honest here, stuck in a closet with the goddamn Cyborg Soldier? “But that doesn’t mean I like having an extra friggin’ handicap.”

Bucky takes a drink and passes it back; Clint does the same. They stand in silence, leaning up against opposite walls of Tony’s Fancy Coat Closet, and Clint is actually feeling a bit better.

“So Steve dancing,” he starts tentatively, and Bucky makes this horrible hissing noise that’s somehow amused and angry and embarrassed all at once. 

“I wish I had never seen that,” he tells Clint.

“What,” Clint ventures, because maybe the Winter Soldier has a sense of humor after all. “Didn’t like watching topless Steve grinding against a clown?”

“Two clowns.” Bucky growls and somehow Clint finds it funny, rather than terrifying. “I wish Hydra could remove that particular memory,” he mutters, “along with the thing that other stripper did with the balloon—”

“— and that sequined bra?” Clint finishes, excitedly offended. “Jesus, that was not at all necessary, I swear. Look, I’ve seen one too many clowns in my life, I don’t need that memory of Captain America in my brain.”

Bucky snorts while shaking his head and says, “Well, at least Stark got that ugly-ass sweater off of him.” There’s a pause, and then he asks - with a tone of voice like he’s gonna regret asking - “Clowns?”

“Oh,” Clint says, and here in the closet where he doesn’t have to look at a hot clown stripper’s abs, or tits, or ass, or whatever, it’s actually funny. “I grew up in a fuckin’ circus, after I left home. And Tony _knows_ that. And he did this anyway.”

Bucky is staring, and Clint feels a _little bit_ judged until Bucky starts rolling his eyes. “I’m sure he forgot,” he drawls, the Brooklyn audible, “and that ain’t a compliment.”

Clint pauses for a moment, and then starts laughing; he tries to keep it quiet, but he can’t help the way he’s giggling like an idiot. “Man,” he says, soft but nearly wheezing. “Winter Soldier’s got jokes.”

This, somehow, just makes Bucky’s eyes even wider in the darkness, and when he reaches out to snag the bottle Clint doesn’t bother to stop him. “Hng,” Bucky says, and then takes another long pull from the bottle. “Hawkeye thinks I’m funny. Finally I can rest in peace.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Clint says, but he’s grinning as he takes the bottle back.

“Really,” Bucky says, something in his voice telling Clint he’s still musing. “Small Stevie loved to dance, but he didn’t really ever…”

“Lick tequila off of a sassy clown boy’s abs?” Clint asks, his voice deadpan level.

Bucky laughs out loud. “No, not that at all.” He pauses, but doesn’t seem discomfited as much as possibly a bit confused. “I mean, always knew he swung both ways, but ‘s a bit of a different thing, seeing…”

“Him and Tony doing shots from between a clown stripper’s tits?”

“Y’know, you can stop with these cold takes any time,” Bucky tells him, but it’s soft and amused. 

Clint smiles, and takes another sip, passing the bottle to Bucky afterwards. “I’m an observer,” he says, and it comes out a bit flirty and what the fuck is that? “That’s my job.”

“The Amazing Hawkeye,” Bucky murmurs, and Clint probably should deny all of that, but instead he just grins at Bucky across the room.

There’s another comfortable moment of silence, both of them leaning against their walls and eyeing each other, and then Bucky ventures: “That’s why I ducked in here, y’know.”

“Which,” Clint says, deadpan. “Sassy clown strippers or Steve’s renewed libido?”

To his surprise Bucky takes the question seriously and Clint almost feels bad, for a second or two. But Bucky’s answer is even, with no additional emotion added. “Not sure. Not any one thing on its own, for sure,” and at that Bucky chuckles a bit. “Be a bit awkward if I had a problem with Stevie likin’ men.”

Oh, oh, _oh._ Clint isn’t really sure why that hits so low in his gut, but for whatever reason it does, and honesty compels him to say something. “Yeah, man, I get that,” he adds, and hopes that it translates into Winter Soldier understanding.

Bucky looks at him for a long while but doesn’t say anything, content to lean up against the wall. Clint offers the bottle, and they pass that back and forth for a while, in what actually feels like a contented silence. Clint’s starting to actually feel refreshed, from his ridiculous break in the closet with Hydra’s greatest weapon.

“What made you leave?” The question is soft, even softer than their previous conversation, and Clint realizes he’s being given a pass to ignore it. Instead, he actually feels more open to answering than he might have otherwise.

“Fuckin’ charades,” he mutters, and likewise Bucky has an opening to pretend he didn’t hear it. He doesn’t use it.

“Charades,” says Bucky, gesturing in an invitation. “Supposedly a great party game.” There’s sarcasm dripping from his voice, and Clint appreciates that he’s making it this easy.

“Yeah, well.” Now Clint can feel his shoulders hunching behind him, because this is kinda dumb, but whatever. It’s Bucky fuckin’ Barnes. “So it’s like ...okay. I don’t, like, get offended when people want to play it or whatever, but every time I’ve tried it’s like…” Wow, this is really hard to say. “It’s one step too close to all the dumb ways people try to pantomime sign language at you when they find out you’re fuckin’ deaf.”

Bucky doesn’t say anything. Clint shrugs. “Like, I get that it’s for fun, but I get in there and all I can think about is the way my brother an’ his friends would all act at me, and that ruins it.”

Bucky takes a long drink and then says, deadpan easy, “Brother sounds like kind of a dick.”

Clint laughs, surprised. “I mean, you’re not wrong.”

Bucky seems to shift a little closer, which Clint appreciates. Man, he really does smell good. Is that weird? He smells good and he’s being awfully nice. And he likes guys. Probably. And they’re stuck here. In a closet. 

Before any of _that_ can get awkward, Bucky says, “I probably wouldn’t know most of the shit on the cards anyway.”

“Steve’s playing,” Clint points out, like a little shit.

Bucky grins, slow and a little crooked. “Yeah, but Stevie’ll find it fun to act it all out anyway, even if he doesn’t get the reference. I’d just get… distracted.” He swallows, and then adds, “an’ Stevie took his shirt off and danced with a stripper clown, I don’t really think he’s got his good judgment hat on.”

“Yes,” Clint agrees promptly. “Steve is no longer the standard of decency for tonight.”

Bucky hums a noise that isn’t really a response, but works as one enough that Clint can lean his shoulder back up against the wall. It’s strange, that he finds this space as comfortable as he does, but — out in the field, he and Bucky are constantly sniping against each other, digs and sass and stomping a little bit on each others’ boundaries, and he’s never really known why that was. He’d kind of just chalked it up to some personality difference, but here they were, stuffed in a closet with Tony’s expensive outerwear, managing to suit each other just fine. 

“Y’know,” he says into the darkness of the closet, “this has actually made me feel a lot better.” It sounds stupid even as he’s saying it, but Bucky glances up at him sharply, as if surprised. Clint glances over, and watches as something fades from Bucky’s face, as if the Winter Soldier was expecting sarcasm and instead came up against… a compliment. 

To Clint’s surprise, that rich mouth gets tugged up into something that looks rather genuine. “Likewise, Hawkeye,” Bucky says, and Clint leans in, cause it looks like he’s gonna add something else—

—The door slams open.

“Clint?” Natasha asks, but it isn’t the tone of voice that means he has to answer right away, so he has a big dumb moment to look at Bucky with his mouth gaping and eyes wide like a goddamned idiot.

“What?” And oh, shit, that’s Tony, elbowing his way into the closet to stand there, larger than life, hands on his hips. He _is_ in fact topless and Clint can’t help the way his eyes fixate on the arc reactor, glowing well enough to provide decent light in this closet, and then ... well, those look like lipstick marks trailing down Tony’s chest. It’s like a trail. That Clint has to follow. With his eyes. Is that _glitter?_

“Birdbrain?” Tony asks. “Frosty?” And something shifts in that confident stance, and oh, no, there’s Steve - also still shirtless, what the _fuck_ is up with this party - peering over Tony’s shoulder as his shoulders hunch the tiniest bit. Clint wouldn’t even be watching for it if Natasha hadn’t trained him so hard in reading body language, but it’s there. “What, my party isn’t interesting enough for you? Have to go hide in the closet?”

Anyone less sensitive wouldn’t have heard the faint but sharp edges of hurt that are echoing Tony’s words, and Clint glances over at Bucky, kind of panicking, and he blames that entirely when his mouth opens and he says, apropos to nothing, “We were making out!”

He can feel everyone freeze, but that’s a _good_ thing, right - no need to offend Tony’s ego, because no, he never wanted to make Tony feel bad — this is a Clint thing, not the kind of thing that’s supposed to take over a friendship, and: Tony’s been trying so hard to buy their friendship that he might not have realized he already has it. 

Tony blinks, very hard and deliberate. “Excuse me?”

“You know,” Clint starts babbling, and he knows Nat will see right through it but it isn’t Nat standing there with her feelings about to be hurt, “one comment leads to another, and y’know, here we are, and there’s this closet…” It’s obvious that everyone’s just looking at him like he’s mad, and that’s fair - Clint Barton wouldn’t ever be able to pull the Winter Soldier, even on a good night - and he glances up at Bucky with a wry smile, hoping his eyes are apologizing—

“Yeah,” Bucky says, somehow stating it firmly and drawling it casually all at once. “We were making out, you fucks.”

And then Bucky futzing Barnes reaches out and pulls Clint real close with one arm around his hip, hand on his lower back, and drags Clint down into a kiss. 

Oh, _shit,_ but that’s really nice. Clint’s arms wrap around Bucky’s shoulders almost instinctively - he’d like to think he has game, he really would - and the fingers of one hand end up tangled in Bucky’s hair, which is really nice and is also what smells so good, here, in the private corner of their closet. Bucky’s other arm - the metal one? And why is that so hot - wraps itself around Clint’s head, thumb on his cheekbone and fingers splayed across his neck. And then Clint makes this totally unintentional noise because Bucky’s mouth is _to die for_ and Bucky’s licking out between Clint’s lips, and their bodies have pressed up against each other, and Clint - understanding he might actually die - tugs at Bucky’s hair gently and is rewarded when Bucky makes this groan that’s probably echoing in some different register. 

“Oh, fuck,” Clint hears Tony say, but in an entirely different tone of voice. Clint isn’t really listening, because he’s discovered the breathy gasp Bucky makes when Clint takes his lower lip between his teeth, so it’s a pretty big shock when the door slams, basically in their faces.

Clint breaks away, the doubts and questions sliding back in through the space between his shoulderblades. “I—” He sighs, swallowing. He doesn’t want to turn away, but doesn’t want to impose on Bucky more than he already has. “Look, Tony’s a bit soft, and I…”

He can feel Bucky freeze beneath his hands, and to his surprise he starts running his palms down Bucky’s shoulders, trying to soothe. “Not sayin’ that wasn’t nice,” Clint manages to get out. “Just sayin’, not something to feel trapped into.” His fingers stop on the back of Bucky’s hands, dwelling for a moment, then trailing back up those arms. He can barely even tell that one’s metal; this really isn’t so bad, is it?

Clint manages a glance up at Bucky’s face. To his surprise there’s a flush spreading across the Winter Soldier’s cheeks, this deep pink that can’t be anything other than emotion, the way it pushes back to Bucky’s ears and flees down his neck and into his chest. Feeling incredibly nervous, Clint runs his hands down and then up again, and lets his palms rest cupping Bucky’s face.

“We good?” He asks, because the calm of this time inside the closet with Bucky isn’t something he wants to throw out. He’ll throw out the awkwardness, of course - nobody wants to keep memories of kissing Hawkeye - but he’d like to keep this period where they’d connected with each other and calmed each other down. If he can, that is; he also _deeply_ doesn’t want to make Bucky uncomfortable, and if that’s a concern that just cropped up in the last half hour, well, he’ll run with it.

Something in Bucky’s face twists, but his hands come up to rest on Clint’s forearms, like an invitation. “Wasn’t expectin’ that,” Bucky says, and Clint lets himself smile, vaguely, not really knowing which part Bucky’s referring to.

But then Bucky’s hands trail up Clint’s shoulders and rest there for a moment that’s far more intimate than accidental. “We probably gotta leave,” Bucky murmurs, his eyes on the floor — until he flicks them up at Clint with _intent_ burning in that pale blue light. “Wanna make it worth it?”

They stumble out of the closet a half hour later, Bucky’s lips bruised red and Clint’s hair entirely mussed, a bruise just peeking out of the collar of the stupid shirt Kate had made him wear to this. As they fall out of their private space, they can hear Tony laughing, and then Steve — and then _Nat,_ which is a ridiculous betrayal to both of them, and Clint grins as Bucky grabs at his hand and turns them to face the music. 

**Author's Note:**

> HIT ME UP: [tumblr](https://sevdrag.tumblr.com/) | [discord and other fun places](https://seventhe.dreamwidth.org/435490.html) | [art etc](https://https//www.instagram.com/sevdrag/)
> 
> love you all!


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